


i believe in love (and the darker it gets, the more i do)

by Good0mens



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Bottom Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Breathplay, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Porn, Explicit Sexual Content, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Waxes Poetic About Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, Light Angst, M/M, Nicky is the moon when Joe is lost in darkness, Post-Canon, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, the trauma of immortality, we're exploring that a bit with sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27786481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good0mens/pseuds/Good0mens
Summary: They say if you give yourself to God before you die, he will absolve you of your sins and accept you into heaven.Well, the earth is giving itself to the sea, soil slowly eroding into the rising water, and Joe is giving himself to Nicky - everything is salt and silt and seafoam eyes, until the pleasure swallows him whole.It is shirk, and Joe does not care. Not when Nicky is touching him, is turning him inside out with his touch, with his fingers opening him up. Every stroke pulls a gasp from his lips, shifting his hips up to get more.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 15
Kudos: 145





	i believe in love (and the darker it gets, the more i do)

**Author's Note:**

> "Then it's just too much, I cannot get you close enough  
> A hundred arms, a hundred years, you can always find me here  
> And lord, don't let me break this, let me hold you lightly  
> Give me arms to pray with, instead of ones that hold too tightly."  
> \- 100 years, Florence and the Machine.
> 
> 'He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness." - Yusuf al-Kaysani.
> 
> Hi guys! Some of this may seem familiar to you - it's a rework of a fic I posted a month or so ago (it's deleted now), because it was very angsty and gory, and I decided to make it smutty and emotional instead. As always, I hope you enjoy!

They say if you give yourself to God before you die, he will absolve you of your sins and accept you into heaven.

Well, the earth is giving itself to the sea, soil slowly eroding into the rising water, and Joe is giving himself to Nicky - everything is salt and silt and seafoam eyes, until the pleasure swallows him whole.

It is _shirk_ , and Joe does not care. Not when Nicky is touching him, is turning him inside out with his touch, with his fingers opening him up. Every stroke pulls a gasp from his lips, shifting his hips up to get more.

His muscles are sore, the shaking of his arms exposed as he reaches up to pull Nicky into another kiss. He feels flayed open, rippling goosebumps along his skin wherever Nicky touches him. Joe looks at the two silver rings looped around his fingers, glinting bright against his hands. Remembers what it felt like when Nicky slid them on, the look on his face after Joe kissed him for it.

Lips press against his beard, close-mouthed, gentle. They move across his jaw, along his cheekbone. His chin, his nose, his eyebrow. When Joe finally opens his eyes, Nicky smiles softly at him, and then those lips are on his.

The stars have moved; the constellations have broken apart and shifted with time. Joe has been around long enough to see the red dwarf star in the Ophiuchus constellation, below Heracles, change its path through the serpent bearer.

In Greek myth, the constellation represented Aesculapius, who mastered the art of bringing people back from the dead. Zeus killed him for it, but put his likeness among the stars to honour him.

(At night Joe dreams he is grappling with the snake, crucified to the black sky by burning celestial bodies piercing his forehead and ankles.)

Joe groans as Nicky presses into him, Nicky’s knees digging into the mattress, holding Joe down as he’s cored out by Nicky’s cock. At last, at last, at last, Nicky is as far as he can go.

Nicky’s hands grip his own, shaking at the foundations as he makes a home in Joe’s body. Joe keeps Nicky here, between the crumbling columns of his thighs, in the arch of his foot where it digs into Nicky’s back, bracketed by the balustrade of his arms as Nicky descends down.

Belonging to Nicky feels like belonging to the universe; expanding, swelling, and bursting out of its own body in its abundance and its eagerness. Ceaseless and enduring, everything is the same, yet everything is different while Nicky remains by his side.

Nicky takes him apart and puts him back together with each roll of his hips.

Again;

again

and again.

His body has been remade over and over, has risen from dirt and dust and decay. Sometimes, he wonders how many times his body can recreate itself before it’s no longer his own but instead just a

_shriek_

of loss.

But Nicky is here; beautiful, terrifying, lucent, redrawing the ends of existence with his fingers as he runs them down Joe’s chest, love flowing into all the shattered places.

Some days, Joe feels like all he does is wait between that place of healing and breaking. There is no solace, no forgiveness, no Akhirah - just an endless desert, stretching out the distance of eternity.

(If he weighed up his deeds across the centuries, would they tip toward ruin or righteousness?)

For the briefest of moments, he imagines sinking down into the depths of this darkness, becoming nothing but a disembodied silhouette of love. Joe only knows Death as the space

between his hands

and Nicky’s skin.

So Nicky makes sure there is nothing between them as he covers Joe’s body with his own, each thrust pushing Joe higher, higher, _higher._

“You don’t have to hide yourself from me, amati,” Nicky whispers, eyes boring imploringly into Joe’s. He takes each of Joe’s unsteady hands and kisses his palms, his wrists, the meat of his thumb. Joe shivers, presses his thumb into Nicky’s bottom lip. Nicky nips at it before taking their joined hands and wrapping it around Joe’s cock.

Nicky once told him about Judas, how he betrayed Jesus and hung himself from the guilt. Because his death was unclean and impure, he was left to rot until his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.

 _What a waste_ , Joe thinks; Nicky pushes into him again, sinking to the hilt, _when he could have just asked for forgiveness._

How did Jesus do it? How did he look Judas in the eye, knowing this man was deceiving him, and not _scream_ at him, not shake him by the shoulders and tell him _you are loved, you are family, you are my brother-_

(-Booker; 200 years, brother, and for what?)

Joe deliriously wonders if Christ secretly likes the diatribe of violence that follows wherever he goes, if he’s ever worried about getting home safe, if he’s listened to Nicky’s heart beating against his chest, purer than any hymn in their fucking books.

Nicky runs his big hands, hands that have harmed him, hands that have held his own for hundreds of years, up Joe’s chest to cup his face. He leans down and kisses Joe, then his hands slip down around Joe’s throat and everything goes hazy and bright.

The steady pressure on his neck constricts his breathing, his muscles going tight with the struggle for air. He must clench around Nicky’s cock because he groans and fucks into him harder, punching a groan out from Joe.

A memory dances before Joe’s eyes; he remembers this feeling, his hands clasped around the hilt of his sword, callouses digging into the grip, Nicky all around him, holding him down, cutting off his circulation. He rolls his eyes closed and sends up another prayer to Nicky, gives it up, places his trust and his body and his life in those beautiful hands.

He’s coming up hard, coming up full, coming up quaking, pleasure running up his weary limbs, yearning and aching. He pushes at the tight feeling in his lungs, something primal and ancient kicking his adrenaline into overdrive as he fights the struggle for air, his moans getting caught up in his chest.

Nicky’s still thrusting into him, each brush against his prostate like fire spreading through his veins. The tight coil of his gut grows and grows and grows before it snaps, and then Nicky lets go and there is oxygen flooding his brain, diaphragm yawning o p e n, and _then_ he comes–

When he becomes aware of himself again, Nicky is holding Joe’s jaw in his hands, coaxing love from his lips. He’s vaguely aware of Nicky’s come leaking out of him, of Nicky slipping out before kissing him again.

Nicky tastes like rebirth in Joe’s mouth, and he says Joe's name like he’s speaking it around a mouthful of poetry. It’s Joe's greatest failure in life – that no words he’s ever crafted could compare to the way Nicky says his name.

And Joe is still staring at Nicky’s mouth, his hands, his eyes, looking for that emptying chasm of death – but he finds only warm skin and hot breath. He holds his own when Nicky bares his teeth.

His heart is a pulpified pomegranate, the fruit of the dead, scarlet juice and jewel seeds, cracked in half and split down the middle, carved out by Nicky’s fingers. Unseen scar tissue over scar tissue, torn and retorn. On his sleeve, in his throat, in Nicky’s hands as he bites into it. His mouth is bitten red and sweet when Nicky kisses him again.

(Perhaps bleeding a heart into a cracked soul is the best way for flowers to grow.)


End file.
